Why No One Should Still Be a Neocon (II)

Jonathan Tobin picks up on a questionable argument about Game of Thrones to celebrate George W. Bush’s foreign policy record:

Whatever happened in Iraq or Afghanistan, President Bush and those who helped craft that “freedom agenda” that is so despised by his immediate successor stood up for the highest values of Western civilization [bold mine-DL].

This is profoundly wrong, and the reason why it is wrong is very relevant to yesterday’s post on neoconservatism. One glaring problem is that the Bush administration’s actions frequently made a mockery of its liberationist rhetoric, and its “freedom agenda” was usually little more than a desperate justification after the fact for policies that had otherwise been discredited or couldn’t be defended any other way. Once the original arguments for invading Iraq were shown to be pernicious nonsense, the Bush administration fell back on justifying the war in terms of democracy promotion. Even then the rhetoric of liberation soon gave way to the reality of propping up a semi-authoritarian ruler in Baghdad who remains in power to this day. The rest of the “freedom agenda,” such as it was, mainly resulted in supporting and indulging petty rulers in the former Soviet Union in their abuses of power.

Very few would try to argue that illegal warfare, torture, and a multi-year military occupation of another country represent the “highest values of Western civilization,” and these are were all bound up in practice with the “freedom agenda” and the ideological fantasies of Bush’s Second Inaugural. It would be entirely fair to say that the “freedom agenda” and the high-flown rhetoric of that speech were expressions of the same ideological compulsions that produced the invasion and occupation and the appalling treatment of detainees. Bush and his allies weren’t upholding our highest values. They were desecrating many of them in the most appalling way, and doing so with the arrogant conviction that they were defending freedom in the process. That is the record that neoconservatives want to laud and celebrate.

I’m not persuaded by the argument that the character Daenerys Targaryen and George W. Bush actually have all that much in common, but that isn’t important. What matters is that identifying this character with Bush becomes an excuse to use a fictional model to try to vindicate the horrible, real-world policies of the Bush administration. It doesn’t make much sense to identify a princess living in impoverished exile trying to return to her own country with the leader of the world’s most powerful state that ordered the invasion of someone else’s country, but it does tell us something disturbing about the mentality of interventionists generally and neoconservatives in particular that they think she is one of them.

If we’re comparing fictional characters, how about Duke from GIJoe? He never resorted to torture or illegal invasions when fighting Cobra, even when Cobra Commander threatened the world with his weather dominator machine. Duke really represented the highest ideals of Western culture.

As it so happens, I’m currently reading these books. This is the passage I just now read: “Mother of dragons,” Daenerys thought. “Mother of Monsters. What have I unleashed upon the world? A queen I am, but my throne is made of burned bones, and it rests on quicksand…”

If George W. Bush ever had a moment of introspection like this, I’ll eat my hat.

Actually George W. Bush confessed while in office to crying every day. I wouldn’t say that’s exactly repentance, but he definitely mourned losses of lives.

I do agree with those that say Daenerys is a neo-con, but not Bush. I’d say John McCain, and just as lusty and belligerent and deluded. More diplomatic and nuanced perhaps, but fictional characters need more dimension than real leaders or no one will believe in them.

PS. If we are going to talk about GoT DL, I think you might need spoiler tags.

“Once the original arguments for invading Iraq were shown to be pernicious nonsense, the Bush administration fell back on justifying the war in terms of democracy promotion”

Maybe that was the administration’s strategy, but from the beginning neocon journalists and “scholars” used this argument, and in their incredible naivete, may have actually believed it. Charles Krauthammer wrote a notable column at the time (titled “Coming ashore” or something like that), stating that we should embark on the noble enterprise of remaking Iraq as a democracy, a la what we had done in Germany and Japan. Democracy promotion played a large role in playing to the public’s more idealistic (or ignorant) side.

I am not sure that it matters whether one is a neocon or not. There will be times when intervention will be the right course of action.

I think you start eating. The images f here of Pres. Bush being some unthinking man bent on war is hyperbole. I understand why there are those that still have issues, few more than myself, I am sure. But that does not address the reality that 9/11 was a serious blow. And while I may rest ion the minority, I remain convinced that our response exacerbated matters and damaged the nation, and did the conservative and republican party no small damage, perhaps permanently.

“I don’t begrudge anyone the urge to imagine counterfactuals in which a family member survives an immoral military excursion. But Salam’s invocation of his uncle means that we must think of a world made up of beloved, lost relatives. Iraq was filled with uncles, and brothers, and aunts, and cousins, and they died by the hundreds of thousands thanks to sentiments of equal nobility and equal delusion to Salam’s. This is the price of viewing the world through a lens of righteous fantasy: You are forever pitting the lives of the hypothetically saved against those of the actually dead.”

Ignoring the details so as to heap blame on a few when so many of our leaders are no less culpable. Impugning their motives minus evidence that they did not actually believe what they were advocating is of no value. I think the evidence was clear then that there was no evidence. But history is replete with the same arguments I am making only to discover that the opposing leadership had in fact misled entire bodies politic.

Pres. Saddam’s defence of his systems and country against UN inspectors was interpreted to mean that he was hiding something. I don’t agree with that analysis in the least. Because evidence ought to be on the table before eating. The networks and their vast information of networks were no better informed. Despite the elite education and experience of the reporters, owners and staff they ignored the basics of advancing argument. Most of Congress, most of the universities, liberal or not were hostile to those who suggested that the endeavours were unwise strategically or based on the evidence.

You know there are conspiracies. And there are government conspiracies. They are real. But in this instance the overall impact of conspiracy just does not exist. Attempting to dissect whether democracy promotion as the sole mission, requires ignoring too many other variables, not to mention 9/11 itself.

And that is the cover layer on any discussion. Extrapolating one of those variables for the purpose of advancing a position is as much a lie as the one you are accusing others for.

And I am a naïve soul. But whether it is naivete’ or just stupidity. But bundling is not some unique twist. It’s efficiency. If we are going to do that then we might as ell do this, that and the pother thing.

And while, it seems obvious to me that the effort to go to war enlisted some rather shady tactics, unless we intend to scour the government and its law makers, shred the DIA, CIA, NSA, and the myriad of intelligence actors and their overseers I think the case being made is just a bit over the top by some. And the ‘Iraqi congress’ that bastion filled with the likes of men eager to be the saviors of Iraq are no less culpable.

As for the public,

“Democracy promotion played a large role in playing to the public’s more idealistic (or ignorant) side.”

9/11 sheered away all my allusions about democracy, free speech, honest discussion and how desire for revenge if unchecked can be problematic.

I have come to appreciate my naivete’, cherish it in fact. And I embrace my new found paranoia of people. Because it didn’t take much to become an enemy. But I also cleave to some notions of fair play and attempting to hang the admin. minus all of the facts, trial by “kangaroo court.”

You know what is funny and deeply troubling? I was effected to my core by the hanging of Pres. Hussein and yet in the aftermath of our invasion, the international community was rather silent about how the court trials were processed. Liberals too were rather silent. I was appalled. Human rights groups suddenly behaved quite inhumane. That process is a blight that we ignore, but has forever stained our sense of ethics and fair play on the world stage, even if the world agreed.

And our former enemies have been watching with a very keen eye and listening with the same.

Should we have gone? I don’t think so and there was no evidence we should. Upon going we should have made the place as WWII Germany so we would not have these issues.

“This is the price of viewing the world through a lens of righteous fantasy: You are forever pitting the lives of the hypothetically saved against those of the actually dead.””

You have not defined righteous, so I could be oversimplifying your import or missing it altogether.

But loss, death chaos, mayhem, disaster, are the consequence of any conflict. And while that is a measure that should cause me pause before so engaging, I am not sure that I buy that it negates righteous cause.

Wars rarely work out as planned. When Lyndon Johnson send large numbers of US troops to South Vietnam in 1965, I doubt that he envisioned in ten years (1975), US troops and South Vietnamese government officials would be clutching the skids of helicopters, as they lifted off from the roof of the US Embassy. A most embarassing exit.

I doubt that Geoorge W Bush, Rumsfeld, Cheney and the other Neocons thought that Iraq would become the mess it did.

War is horrific thing. It is death and destruction. War is not a PowerPoint presentation. It is not a flowchart. You have field grade officers (majors and colonels) at the Pentagon, making up nice, neat presentations for the generals and high level civilians, trying to package a war into a neat, 30 page PowerPoint presentation. Couple this with a President, like W Bush or Johnson, both from Texas, both with manhood issues, and you have a receipe for disaster.

War is not Option A of a PowerPoint presentation. It is death, destruction and madness and cannot be controlled, once unleashed. War should be avoided if at all possible. If however, you find yourself in a war, you must win it, by any means necessay. You must murder the enemy in such numbers that they give up. This is horrific to be sure, but you must either stay out of war, or get “medieval.”

Neocons have tried to sanitize war, tried to sell it, via the use of aircraft, instead of ground troops, etc. Have you noticed how very few of them actually served themselves? Neocons are chickenhawks and chairborne rangers. When they are ready to carry an M4 and walk point through booby trapped areas, then and only then would I listen to them.

Funny thing about Daenerys Targaryen is that in the books not yet made into TV some of the cities she frees turn into violent hell holes. So Jonathan Tobin may be a bit right about Daenerys Targaryen, just not they way he wanted it to.

As some others here have already posted, there are indeed valid comparisons between Daenerys and George W., in that both are foreigners embarking on a military adventure in a far off land that they have very little familiarity with or understanding of.

Not to get too deep into spoilers, but in the later books not yet covered by the television show, the cities Daenerys has conquered do indeed turn into violent hell-holes with her soldiers getting picked off one by one, and local politicians outmanoeuvring her at every turn. Initial moralistic objectives soon collapse when it turns out the reality is far more complex than expected. Not so very different from the American experience in Iraq.

The neo-cons are former trotskyists who always maintained their believe in international revolution, brought about by the elite uppon the undeserving proles. They never expected to be thanked for it, they never expected it to be bloodless, or pretty (except Bush, who was more of a tool anyway). Everything else surrounding their public ideology were means to an end: the unrestricted state capitalism; the unabashed pandering to nationalists and zealots; the indifference to deficits.

They were going to use American power to force democracy on the world and in doing so provide the west with a new sense of purpose. With the succesfull elections in Afghanistan and the ongoing world wide revolutions against authoritarean regimes, it seems they are succeeding at least in their first goal. However, it remains to be seen if the victory was a Phyric one and if American hegemony has been strenghted or destroyed by it.